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Trademark Trouble For RIM Over New "BBX" Name
AZA43 writes "As if its latest BlackBerry service outage--the worst in company history--and the mass exodus of BlackBerry users to iOS and Android weren't bad enough, RIM is now facing a potential trademark lawsuit over the name of its next generation BlackBerry OS: BBX. The BBX announcement was the most significant news to come from RIM's BlackBerry Developer Conference this week, and now it looks like RIM may have change the upcoming platform's name to something else. RIM just can't seem to do anything right these days."
I mean, come on people - you could hire a fucking INTERN for $10 an hour to look and see if there's any prior art or previous use of the term BBX, and I'm pretty sure that even if the kid isn't that bright or skilled, after about a week, they would have been able to give some kind of a thumbs up/down on this. This is just GLARING incompetence and mind boggling arrogance on the part of RIM.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
BBNX isn't so bad. Why don't they trademark names before they announce them?
did you forget to take your meds?
I mean, c'mon, do a google search before you name a flagship product, at least check to see if the name has already been used.
The BBx folks (company name BASIS) have been around for over 25 years and have many thousands of sites using their products in the US, Eurozone, and the far east. A large VAR base and some great new products built with Java that run almost anywhere, from server to PC to hand held phone or tablet..
Maybe the RIM folks think they'll get away with it because they're bigger ?
They just can't catch a break, can they?
But the complainant has clearly been using the BBx name long before RIM. It's even a technology purposed product. They're justified in defending their trademark -- it's how the system is supposed to work.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
...RIM's product is the best, therefore, "BBKing". Further posts are unnecessary.
I'm not going to say that picking a good name to brand your products is not a very important thing-nor that one shouldn't invest the proper amount of resources to properly secure it and make sure it's unique in the market you're aiming for. But I really wish some of these articles weren't so slanted against RIM. I know it's all the rage these days to kick them when they are down, especially when they are in this transition period where they are moving towards a new platform and some of the issues they've had-just makes me a little sad.
http://devblog.blackberry.com/2011/10/open-source-playbook-os/?CPID=TWDDevCon
As some people on the CrackBerry forums have said, "I could care less if they called it FROG OS" because it finally looks like RIM is starting to deliver on the promises they've put forward for the new platform. It almost looks to be the most open platform available now, where it offers several different options for developers to use. With both the WebWorks API for both BlackBerry OS and the Playbook OS or the Adobe AIR/Flex/Flash API, and now finally the NDK with a very focused porting of Open Source libraries.
And the kicker? The one thing that everyone has been saying that RIM can't pull off? You can take an Android .apk and repackage it as an PlayBook .bar file all without looking at the code just need to run a couple of commands and then side load it onto a PlayBook and then use that application right now with the OS 2.0 Developers Beta.
So... maybe they are going to have issues with BBX name.. If they have to change it? So what, it's not like it matters, because they are finally giving people what they wanted. A real development environment to target for their current and upcoming devices and platforms. They didn't seem to think so: http://crackberry.com/official-staement-rim-regarding-basis-claim-bbx-trademark
Keep in mind this is all based upon QNX which has an amazing history and is used in a lot more things then people realize. I cannot wait to see what will come of this, even if they take a massive beating on the way down. We've seen giants fall and return again. It's like karma after all.
HiOS.
New Economic Perspectives
It would be so fitting.
Their product isn't even called BBx anymore. They call it BBj so I don't understand why their customers would be confused. http://www.basis.com/bbj
If BBX is supposed to be a combination of BlackBerry and QNX (BBX), and they can't use it, then they should just name it BlackBerry and QNX (BBQ).
Might be catchy; "Hey, I'll BBQ you later!"
"As if its latest BlackBerry service outage--the worst in company history--and the mass exodus of BlackBerry users to iOS and Android weren't bad enough, RIM is now facing a potential trademark lawsuit over the name of its next generation BlackBerry OS: BBX. The BBX announcement was the most significant news to come from RIM's BlackBerry Developer Conference this week, and now it looks like RIM may have change the upcoming platform's name to something else. RIM just can't seem to do anything right these days."
Who cares what they call their OS? I don't base my OS selection on name, but rather on performance.
This article is the tech-equivalent of critiquing the merits of what outfit Kim Kardashian wore out last weekend.
This quarter, actually. It makes sense if you think about it.
Nobody in the world has ever fucking heard of the other BBX before.
I've fucking heard of BBx! I'm surprised it still exists. I can't believe there's a fucking Thoroughbred Basic for Vista. At least MAI Basic Four, Micro Five, and Microshare seem to have fallen by the wayside.
But JHFCoaS, nothing says "stuck in the '70s" like BBx. Oy!
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Well the search term BBX sure brings up some interesting hits.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Microsoft's money is offshore. But it's not in Canada. They need to assimilate Skype and Yahoo first anyway. RIM is just going to hang in there 'till 2013 if they're waiting for Microsoft to buy them.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
From here, I can hear Mike Lazaridis' and Jim Balsillie's moms singing Soft kitty while rubbing their respectives chests.
Achille Talon
Hop!
And Apple had to deal with Cisco and IOS. It's just a name. What really matters is that they own QNX and the OS itself.
They should just call it "RIMJob" because it's made by RIM and gets the job done...
What?
Yeah, that just happened.
Publicity play. Can anyone please tell me.... ...if the extra publicity makes you any more likely to program in Business BASIC or for the BlackBerry?
I worked for a company that provided terminal emulation software for use by BBX on Xenix machines (among other places). While I'm not as surprised as some people to hear they are still around in some form, both companies are now marginal at best.
I wonder how many people cashed in their $100 worth of free applications for BlackBerry after their (effectively) global outage? I think they are quickly losing relevance to just about everyone at this point.
-- Terry
If you don't defend trademarks, you can end up losing them. Therefore if a company sees a possible trademark dilution, they have to make some effort to defend it. What in reality will probably happen is that there will be some kind of negotiation between the companies, an agreement signed, and Blackberry will use BBX, as will the original company; they'll just agree not to move into each other's areas.
The thing though that cracks me up about these cases is the talk of customers being confused. A couple of years ago, SPARC International ceased and desisted SparkFun Electronics because SparkFun was confusingly similar to SPARC, and that SPARC's customers might get confused. I saw this as an enormous insult to the intelligence of SPARC's customers. They aren't room temperature IQ drooling cretins (as SPARC's law firm seems to think), SPARC's customers are generally pretty intelligent and will never get confused between SPARC and SparkFun. SparkFun and SPARC ended up making an agreement, no money changed hands.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
They had a BBx operating system as well, it think BASIS Intl bought it from them.
Having used it, I can tell you is was pretty horrible, not that this is a factor.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The iPhone trademark had been filed in the 90s by a company that Cisco bought in 2000. The trademark hadn't been used in a phone since 2001, and had expired, except it was in an extended period when Cisco could still renew it by paying an extra fee.
To renew it, Cisco had to show the trademark was currently in use in commerce. The proof would be a photo of the retail packaging sent to the USPTO. So Cisco literally took an existing Linksys VOIP phone box, slapped an "iPhone" sticker on it, and sent that to the USPTO. In short, Cisco committed fraud to retrieve their abandoned trademark now that it had value to Apple.
Cisco didn't even start selling this re-labeled phone as an iPhone until AFTER Apple had been in negotiations with Cisco over the technically expired trademark. Cisco didn't really have a case, which is why they settled for a vague promise of "interoperability."
I thought that was D3N1S3M1L4N1
There is no mass exodus to iPhone / Android. Stop spreading hysteria/fud.
RIM is doing reasonably well and only will improve over the next few years. Their products are actually quite good, though the media continues to give it lukewarm reception. There are many shortcomings of iPhone that BB excels at (I would know, I own both devices).
As of right now, there is no replacement for BlackBerry. No other phone is as secure AND gives its users such fine-grained control over firewall and other app access to its resources.
While marketed as a "platform," BBx combines an old version of Basic (Business Basic from the 1980's) that runs on a pseudo PICK O/S environment which in turn runs under Solaris, Linux, and Windows.
Basis International developed BBj as the "next generation" of BBx that would move from Basic to Java back in the days when everyone thought Java would take over the world.
To the dismay of Basis, thousands of older customers have been perfectly happy not to migrate their commercial legacy apps off of BBx.
In other words, they WISH they had put BBx to "sleep" years ago, but have been unsuccessful. (Sounds like a lot of COBOL shops.)
What RIM has done is to use a trademark that among BBx customers means old, creaky language who vendor doesn't even like it much any more.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.